Just to let everyone know we have been using the Tea Tree Oil and mixing it with the new Encap-Punch and then pouring it on stinking spots and using the water claw and our TM to extract it back out. The Encap-punch seems to work great because it is less foamy (thanks Richard for the heads up on that). We have been real pleased with it and I think I have found a new way to reduce my cost and have a better finished product. So far, the tea tree oil has cured vomit odors, dirty dog odors, and urine odors.

Kevin Pearson

Glad the Punch is working for you Kevin. My testing has been positive also. Since the last thread about this I have had 2 water claw tests using 40 drops of tea tree oil per gallon of Encap-Punch dilution. I have gone back to check on one of them since it it's close to home. It checked out fine and the other job I called on and the homeowner was thrilled. She had a 3'X 3' area in her hallway that the cat had been nailing. We pulled lots of urine out. The next day she stuck her nose down to the area and had no hint of odor.

So far so good.

Glad to hear the Tea Tree is working for you Kevin.

I love Tea Tree. In fact that's one of the reasons we included it in our formulations. (Side point: I used to own a business that sold essential oils - that's where I learned about Tea Tree.) I think it's perfect for our industry because it has a clean fresh smell, it kills a broad range of bacteria (even the MRSA virus), and it has good solvent properties too. Pretty cool stuff IMHO.

BTW, there's enough Tea Tree in Encap-Spot to effectively treat any kind of odor problem spot you're likely to encounter.





Rick Gelinas
encapman

Is the odor produced by Releasit DS from TT-oil, or from some other ingredient? Is there the same amount
of TT-oil in Encap Punch, because to me there is much less odor associated with Punch, and - when sprayed -
less likelihood to cause coughing.

Mark,

The aroma of each product comes from the Tea Tree as well as the other active ingredients. They all have different scents, however the Tea Tree smell is obviously the predominant scent.


Regarding the coughing...
IT'S BEEN FIXED

First let me clarify. Coughing was caused by one of the detergent components that was present in the detergents (it wasn't ever caused by the Tea Tree). The coughing was due to aerosolized (atomized) spray droplets of the detergent.


REFORMULATIONS

We've spent the last 6 months working on our detergent formulations.

This involved working with over 40 different raw ingredients. I worked with a couple of excellent chemists with strong backgrounds in surface chemistry. And I sought the advice of several different chemical manufacturers. The end result...

Drum roll please!

No drum roll. To be totally honest, we weren't able to make any overwhelmingly dramatic changes. The improvements were more subtle than anything drastic. You see, we used the existing Releasit products as our benchmark. It's not easy trying to make improvements on something that's already performing very nicely. You get the idea - how are we going to take it to the next level? I kept on coming back to the old products feeling that we weren't seeing a big shift with the tweaks. So kept working on it. Some improvements resulted.

Here's what we were able to come up with. We got rid of the component that was causing the coughing when the product was aerosolized. So the detergents can now be sprayed in fine atomized droplets without any coughing. We also are achieving an even better dry down than before with the products. The film releases even easier from the fiber now. So I feel we were able to make some nice improvements. The detergents aren't hugely different than they were before, they just perform a little better than they did before.

Six months of reformulating and more batches than you can imagine and all we have to show for it are some slightly better products. Was it worth the effort? That's a question I've asked myself. I'm thinking that it was definitely worth the effort. If you could change the header on a Porsche and squeeze out a few extra horsepower would you do it? it's not gonna create a new car. But I think that anybody who loves their car would make the modification. I'm like the guy who loves his Porsche. And besides, now all the other encap manufacturers will have to try even harder to figure out what the heck makes Releasit work the way it does. It's my goal to keep the best encap products way out in front of the pack

The new products have been field tested and have been being shipped for the past few weeks now. The results the carpets are the best we've seen. In fact I used the new Encap-Clean DS on a real problem carpet about three weeks ago (this is a real stinker). It's a pale green glue-down with a ton of traffic that gets minimal routine vacuuming. It really should get monthly cleaning to keep it looking decent. Well the new formulation did exactly as I had hoped it would. I looked at the carpet this week and it looked more evenly clean and bright than it has looked in the past. In the past, after a couple of weeks this problem carpet would normally start rolling off and begin to show signs of uglying out. Well we're going into the third week and the carpet still looks like it was just cleaned. Success.

Well there ya have it. Some minor changes to make Releasit even better. Oh, and the new artwork will be available on the jugs within the next month too (everything takes time). So we're excited about the changes around here. I hope you guys will be as pleased as we are.





Rick Gelinas
encapman